Inappropriateness Awareness Day
by Feather Ice
Summary: There is but one day of the year that both House and Wilson dread with the same intensity. House doesn't take it well. Wilson is the unfortunate bystander dragged along for the ride.


A/N: Well, this fic frankly sucks, but I can't seem to muster up the enthusiasm to delete it off of my computer. I figured I might as well foist it off on you guys. It was written as a Valentine's Day thing, in case you haven't noticed. It's not really BL, though it can be taken as such. It's mostly just House and Wilson goofing off, but still, read at your own risk. As usual. Duh.

Inappropriateness Awareness Day

The day began with a chorus of hairdryers and groans, just like every other day. It began with Wilson getting shocked by the insane amount of static the new bathroom (and Karma) generated just for him, debating on whether he would rather be busy making himself presentable in hopes of actually having a life, or in staving off the pesky thing with a really big breakfast and getting fat, and then giving in and going for the breakfast anyway because _breakfast_.

House, respectively, burrowed deeper under the covers until there were none left to burrow under, subsequently fell out of bed, and sat up knowing that today was going to be a hellish monstrosity posing as another chapter in his desolate life, sniffed the air, and amended that it would be a hellish monstrosity posing as another chapter in his desolate life, but with bacon.

Not exactly removed from normalcy.

Both men glanced hopefully out of a nearby window before feeling ready to face the other, just because perhaps it was not a day like any other and they would find a meteor streaming through the sky, or a freak snowstorm, or that the sun had not, in fact, risen, just like every other day. No such luck, but Wilson did note that traffic was marginally less dreadful than one might expect, and House watched some poor sap getting kicked out of his apartment by an irate girlfriend, which cheered him up immensely. About an eight as far as cheering up went—not enough to prevent evil intentions, but enough to stave them off for a little while.

Wilson, encumbered with bacon and eggs—his faith in Judaism was always directly proportional to how much he was looking forward to his day—found House, when he found House, struggling with his socks. He held out the plate with a tired, muttered promise that it wasn't poisoned, and instead of taking it House looked up and started to smirk.

"You look like you're looking forward to this is as much I as I am," he gloated, sadistic bastard that he was, and Wilson gave him a dirty look but did nothing to refute it. He was sincerely dreading this day. His reasons weren't quite as good as House's probably were, but that wasn't stopping the cold apprehension roiling around in his gut.

"The bacon offends my Jewish sensibilities," Wilson said after a moment, because he figured he should try. "But I didn't think it showed."

House gave up on the sock, took the plate, and smiled knowingly. Wilson debated throwing the fork at his head, but decided against it, because he needed to conserve energy for the abomination that lay up ahead. His favorite holiday, this was not. Either he'd been jaded with age, or it had always sucked and he'd waited until his midlife crisis to notice it. There was no point in asking House about it. He was pretty much useless unless the object in question began to spurt blood from places where it ought not be spurted.

The morning progressed with no further bickering—the dark and foreboding threat of despair will do that to you—and by the time they were both loaded into Wilson's car, there was really no escaping what they were walking into. They both stared at the wheel, and at Wilson's hands on the wheel, and had it been within eyesight range, they both would have been ogling the accelerator too. House fidgeted, drumming his cane lightly against the car door.

"We don't actually have to go," he pointed out, reasonably, which was frightening in and of itself. "We could get out of the car right now, go back inside, and make fun of the crappy specials on TV that you insist on watching. I could have the flu." A pause. "…You could testify as to this."

"Ah, but we've already wasted time getting in the car," Wilson murmured. "It would be a shame to back out now, really."

House's eyes widened fractionally. The drumming sped up a beat. "Then we could drive to Chicago. Or Montreal." He said, and with a perfect French accent. It was deeply annoying. "You've never been there, right? It would be a whole new, interesting experience, you could eat your weight in maple syrup, and we could tell Cuddy that we were kidnapped by Canadian terrorists. Better yet, let's find some Canadian terrorists and have them kidnap _Cuddy_!"

Wilson eyed him, laughing in a pained sort of way that one might if one had just seen someone do something extremely funny and hurt themselves quite badly doing it. "You've certainly put a lot of thought into this."

House had started to glare at the offending hands that had yet to part from the steering wheel, and muttered sourly, "If you don't want to do it either, I don't see why I have to."

"At least," Wilson remarked mournfully, "You get to go through the day as normal. I'm going to get _assaulted_."

The resulting sound House made did not sound very sympathetic. "Cameron," he reminded Wilson lightly, but without real inflection, because Wilson had at this point started the car and gotten it moving. House growled under his breath. "Humbug. Today sucks."

"…Yes it does."

The cane stopped tapping entirely, and the absence of noise was more distracting than the drumming had been. Wilson glanced over and found House staring moodily into the distance, and pointedly ignoring the look Wilson was shooting his way. Wilson sighed a little bit. Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned that. His day was not going to be fun in the least, but in spite of his complaining, he knew it would be preferable to House's. Today was little better than a cruel irony on all the things House had lost.

Sometimes, Wilson felt he would have been endlessly fortunate to have been born mute.

Wilson was tempted to pat House on the shoulder or… something, but he was entirely sure that House wouldn't take it well.

The hospital was, sadly, where they left it, just like any other day. Parking offered no escape. No one shouted suddenly about fires, hurricanes, or zombie invasions. The doors swished open cheerily, and House seemed to shrink back in his coat. Wilson surveyed the damage in awe and a fair bit of disgust.

"My God," House muttered, sounding very much in favor of the latter. "I'm going blind."

"They certainly… outdid themselves this year," Wilson responded bravely, mustering up the courage to go inside. He plucked a paper heart from the forest overhead, shaking glitter and streamers off of it with the same frantic, thrashing motions of a man who had just discovered venomous spiders crawling along his arm. The remaining pink decoration dangled daintily from his fingers. "It's nice?" Wilson tried.

"I think I'm going to be sick," House informed him, and then felt the need to pantomime this at the nearest orderly. He too snatched at a heart on one of the paper chains, only he felt the need to take the entire chain, probably to reassure himself that the entire thing was naught but transient, as the ensuing rip assured him it was. House strode for the elevator, trailing a sparkling river of hearts and Wilson, because the oncologist had long given up pretending he was not affiliated with the madman.

Once in the elevator, House threw the paper chain over his shoulder in a shimmering arc, where it smacked into whatever unfortunate soul he had decided deserved to be covered in glitter and pink. A single segment remained caught in his fingers, and House smiled a little bit as he started to tear it, instincts to wreak havoc somewhat soothed.

"Happy Asshole's Awareness Day," he sang, with that psychotic cheer only House could affect. He toasted Wilson with a nice chunk of paper heart, which took a moment to dust out of his hair. Before Wilson could point out that his moniker had nothing to do with the holiday, House added, "To all the asshole's who got dumped."

Wilson tried not to laugh. It wasn't hard. He felt like turning around and running for the hills, not laughing. Was that nurse smiling at him? Oh, why yes, yes she was. And he was smiling back, completely reflexive mind you, completely reflexive, and now was she blushing? Please let that not be blushing. Please. Nope. Definitely blushing. And now he was grinning wider and about to ask her something about what a nice day it was to set her at ease and make small talk.

SMALL TALK WAS THE LAST THING HE NEEDED!

House saved him from far greater woes than small talk by rapping him in the shin with his cane. His leg protested; the rest of Wilson was grateful. He didn't look back to see what the nurse thought of the entire situation.

"To all those who listen," House cried over the awkward elevator conversation—and rustles as one unhappy person tried to disentangle himself from a paper streamer—looking over his shoulder with a particularly nasty glint in his eye. "—and glisten," he amended, and Wilson prayed to God that he was not going to start rhyming.

"Love sucks." House declared, pausing to let the full impact of this sink in, and then went on. "It's a disgusting, chocolate-covered lie for morons and dumbfucks."

Wilson sighed.

"—and in the cases of those, an affront to the gene pool." Mouths were dropping open and House smiled benevolently up at Wilson who had just dropped his head into his hands, before continuing. "And to you back there holding the chocolates, you're an absolute tool." He paused, either for more dramatic impact, or to ad lib some new sonnet to his—admittedly, not as bad as it could be—artistic aspirations.

"So for all you girlfriends and boyfriends hoping desperately to get laid," he boomed with an air of finality, "It'd be great if you could keep it in your pants because this is a hospital for Christ's sake." A glance that was more pointed then it needed to be was directed at Wilson, who thought that was pretty unfair. After all, he wasn't the one risking getting assaulted here. No, he was keeping his mouth closed and definitely NOT looking back at that nurse because the expression on her face was NOT priceless. At all.

"Fight the power of capitalism and human idiocy!" House cried joyfully as the doors swung open and he stepped out neatly, Wilson stumbling after him and trying not to look amused about the deathly silence that had fallen over the elevator's occupants. House glanced back, fist raised. "For as a doctor, I, Robert Chase, can never condone your foolish sentimentality!"

The elevator was off again, and House looked a little more at ease. Wilson made that pained laugh again, and hoped that this day would not be punctuated with House rushing into his office and screaming 'sanctuary' at yet another pissed off employee.

"That last part didn't rhyme," he said, as House settled more comfortably onto his cane and started off.

"It was that or 'subtlety of a brick' which rhymed with something I probably shouldn't say in hospital halls," House explained. "If I want to keep my job. You should be proud of my restraint."

"Ah," said Wilson, "I'll keep that in mind." House snickered, and Wilson rolled his eyes. "It's not really that bad," Wilson felt the need to say, because he knew that House had meant every word, except the blatant lie about his name, of course. "Love is… nice."

"Love is a convenient reason to get your rocks off," House snorted, battering his pathway down the hall. "Or it's a social contract to enslave someone into continuing to pretend to care about you. Either way—" He rounded on Wilson now, gesturing flamboyantly, and raising his voice enough so that anyone in the halls either turned to see what he was up to now or started walking much faster in the opposite direction. "—that's a lie! Cuddy's boobs are completely real!"

People who really should have known better still looked to see what was going on. Wilson's shoulders sagged.

"_Thanks_ for that, House."

"Anytime."

There came a very brief pause in the conversation, and then Wilson burst out, "I don't really mind the social contract." House gave him a look of absolute disdain, and he shrugged a shoulder. "It works, doesn't it? It's a commitment to keep caring—and it isn't always a lie."

"It's _usually_ a lie," House corrected stubbornly, surprising Wilson, who hadn't expected any admission at all. Suddenly House was facing him as well, holding out the crumpled and largely puréed paper heart from the elevator. Wilson took it, prepared to hand it back whenever House grabbed whatever he needed his other hand for, and they stared at each other for a long moment before Wilson blinked and jumped.

"Oh! Is it—um—for me?"

House nodded as if this was a very, very obvious thing, when it was not at all, complete with eye-rolling and cane-leaning. Wilson frowned, inspecting the heart. It was on its last limbs. Even turning it over sent little shreds of paper to the ground. He had not the faintest idea of what he was supposed to do with it. All and all it was very much like something House would get him.

"Thank you for this… act of vandalism on hospital property?" Wilson said, cautious. House continued to stare at him and Wilson continued to stare at the heart until he felt very, very awkward and was forced to finally say something meaningful. Crap. He hadn't planned for this.

"Is this your weird—and grotesque—way of telling me that you care?" He asked, wincing, chancing a look up at House's face, and was rewarded with a very, very, VERY brief smile before the other doctor shrugged.

"Happy Asshole's Awareness Day," he declared, the phrase suddenly taking on an all new meaning. Wilson fought a goofy smile back.

"I'll share my chocolate," he promised, and House's eyes lit up a little bit. Wilson, feeling bold, held his eyes for a moment longer. "Still not marrying you, though." House rolled his eyes again, turning to go, raising a hand when Wilson called after him, just loudly enough to prove mortifying, "Happy Valentine's Day, Sweetie!"

House laughed evilly, and set off to terrorize more young, impressionable doctors. Wilson was pretty sure this time he would probably rap.

But that was Inappropriateness Awareness Day for you.


End file.
